Panthers begin quest for franchise turnaround

Camp begins Saturday and optimism abounds as 51 players fight for 23 jobs on a team hoping to break a nine-year playoff drought

September 18, 2010|By Harvey Fialkov, Sun Sentinel

CORAL SPRINGS — The Panthers have blacked out the upper deck and are selling discount season tickets while new General Manager Dale Tallon is selling hope. But neither Rome nor the reigning Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks - which Tallon had his claws in constructing - were built in a day, or a year, or five years for that matter.

Tallon has been asked to renovate a franchise that hasn't sniffed the playoffs since the 1999-2000 season when Pavel Bure was still streaking past defenders. As training camp convenes Saturday morning at 9 a.m. at Saveology.com Iceplex with a 51-man roster, Tallon and third-year head coach Pete DeBoer have three days to prepare for the first exhibition game against Carolina and three weeks to whittle the roster to 23 in time for the Oct. 10th season opener in Edmonton.

"Thirty teams are excited because 30 teams think they have a chance,'' Tallon said Friday after the players took physicals. "That's obviously what we're selling here is hope, and change, and a whole new attitude in approaching things.

"I'm happy with the depth chart, happy with all the work ethic of the young kids at rookie camp and I'm anxious to see how they perform with the pros. Overall, everybody's upbeat and positive and we're undefeated.''

With that, here are five key issues for the Panthers as they head into training camp.

Is David Booth healthy?

Can matinee idol left wing David Booth return to health and the form displayed in 2008-09 when he scored a career-high 31 goals after sustaining two concussions last season and finishing with just 16 points in 28 games? On a team that scored just 202 goals last season to rank 28th in the league, and after shipping its second leading scorer, Nathan Horton, to Beantown, it's imperative that this 25-year-old sharpshooter fills the net up and earns the $4.25 million per year he's making.

Tallon looks for defense

Tallon was a two-time All-Star defenseman so it's no wonder he preaches defense first. That also explains why he spent four of his 13 draft picks on defensemen, including third overall pick Erik Gudbranson and second rounder Alexander Petrovic. He also brought in defensive stalwarts Mike Weaver and Dennis Wideman to compensate for the loss of Keith Ballard and Dennis Seidenberg. With eight blue liners under contract and 17 in camp, can one of the youngsters such as Gudbranson, Petrovic or Keaton Ellerby break through the logjam among defenders that allowed the most shots in the league last year?

Who's scoring the goals?

Clearly, Booth and Stephen Weiss, who's coming off a career-high 28 goals, can't provide all the scoring. Tallon is optimistic that young wingers Michael Frolik and Rostislav Olesz will continue to improve. Frolik has scored 21 goals in each of his first two seasons and 'Rusty' has had two 14-goal seasons in his last three. It's critical that offseason pickup Chris Higginsn goes back in time when he was scoring 20 or more goals for four consecutive seasons. Tallon acquired Wideman to provide more offense from the point on the 29th-ranked power play.

Net-minder questions

The Panthers are deepest in the nets with Tomas Vokoun coming off another stellar season in which he posted a 2.55 GAA with seven shutouts and the third-best save percentage (.925). Scott Clemmensen is a solid backup. But Vokoun is 34 and in the final year of a $6.3 million deal so this training camp Swedish phenom Jacob Markstrom and Tyler Plante will get a chance to prove that one of them can succeed Vokoun next year or possibly this year at the trade deadline if the Panthers are struggling.

Avoiding the slow start

It seems every year the Panthers limp out of the gate so it's imperative that over the next three weeks DeBoer and his coaching staff integrates several new players into their system in time for the first month of games that is pretty soft with eight of nine opponents finishing 13th or worse in the standings last year. Tallon and DeBoer believe that by staying home to train and not jetting to Finland or Nova Scotia that they've eliminated any excuses for a slow start.